The Latest Threat to the Order of The United Methodist Church

In recent weeks, there were some excellent posts on the need for Order in The United Methodist Church. These were mostly written in response to the failure of Bishops to find adequate means to restrain progressive clergy who have participated in same-sex weddings and, more recently, in response to some churches using a refusal to pay apportionments as a means of political protest within the Church.

With the authors of these blogs, I agree in the need to return to order, and have advocated for Bishops to return to judicial processes to carry out their role in protecting the Discipline.

However, there was a common tendency, in the midst of this recent debate to make the issue of order overly one sided. Take, for instance, David Watson’s blog on Ecclesial Disobedience and the Ordained. Watson, whom I usually take to be something like the epistemic equivalent of the Pope sitting ex cathedra for Methodists, starts his post with a fairly harsh warning to progressives:

I’m afraid, though, that after 2016, these theological friends and I–these brothers and sisters in Christ–will no longer share a worshipping community. The denomination has reached a breaking point. Of course, our disagreements over many topics, most prominently ‘homosexual practice,’ are nothing new. What is different now than in the last four decades? The answer is quite clear: ecclesial disobedience.

Watson is like the frustrated parent who, coming upon his feuding children, locates fault with the one who threw the last punch. There is no doubt that progressives have escalated the challenge to church order in the last year, but as I pointed out in a blog for Political Theology last December, the challenges to church order began long before this.

For at least the last twenty years, the Good News movement and the Charismatic movement have been threatening to break with the order of the Church entirely if the GC did not follow their will.

Throughout this recent debate, Good News has represented itself as vouchsafing two central United Methodist values: (1) the unity of the tradition, and (2) the outcome of the established process of discernment in the General Conference. This position has strengthened Good News’ rhetorical strength against those who are currently participating in ecclesial disobedience. However, Good News’ professions to hold these values as central deserves further scrutiny.

Every General Conference is surrounded by political maneuvering, and Good News has been a major player in this maneuvering around homosexuality. As it turns out, one of Good News’ most consistent moves is to warn that its constituents are likely to leave the United Methodist Church, or bring the denomination to schism if the General Conference changes the language in The Book of Discipline about homosexuality.

Take, for instance, the following examples: In preparation for General Conference in 2000, Good News sent delegates a video, warning of “a church split or substantial defection of members, churches and clergy” over issues related to homosexuality. In 2004, calls for splitting the denomination at a meeting of the Confessing Movement at the General Conference became so disruptive, that it was necessary for the General Conference to hold a vote affirming the unity of the church. Before the 2012 General Conference, on a blog at Good News, Lambrecht quoted Wolfhart Pannenberg: “Those who urge the church to change the norm of its teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism.”

Such statements ought not to be read only as descriptions of the situation, or as mere reactions to progressive acts of ecclesial disobedience. These are political claims, intended to influence the process of discernment in the General Conference itself. This is all to say that Good News, which has been positioning itself as the patron of Church unity and the Church’s deliberative process, influenced that process by warning that its constituency is willing to give up on the Church’s unity and walk away from the outcomes of the Church’s deliberative process if those outcomes were not in line with its position on homosexuality.

For those who have been following this development, the statement from the Good News movement today will not be surprising. Some have pointed out the apparent hypocrisy of having complained about progressives breaking from Church order while functionally announcing that you are in schism from the order of the church. But, it’s not new, it is just more of the worldly politics that have been driving us to the present situation for more than the past two decades.

Kevin, you make the claim that the “Charismatic Movement” (along with Good News) has been “threatening to break with the order of the Church entirely if the GC did not follow their will,” and that it also had something to do with the brouhaha about “amicable separation” at GC 2004. What do you mean by that?

I’ve been personally involved with Aldersgate Renewal Ministries (the most recognized charismatic-oriented group in the UMC) for almost a decade, and its leadership and members have scrupulously avoided denominational “politics.” If that’s who you’re referring to, I think you may need to get your facts straight. Or have I missed something?

Thanks for your comment. In December, when I wrote the original blog post, you will perhaps remember that we had a short exchange about it. I apologized if I had obscured real differences between these movements and organizations. As I noted at the time, I was working off of news reports, which seemed to conflate the organizations at times.

I invite you, at this point to set the record straight and correct my errors. How would you characterize the relationship between your organization and Good News? What kind of overlap exists between the two in terms of members, supporters, and advocates? What role has your organization, and have your members therein played in the history of calls for schism within the United Methodist Church? Are any of the members of your organization included in the 80 clergy members noted in the Good News statement from today? And what is the position of your organization on schism within the Church?

I thank you ahead of time for clarifying this for me. I am deeply interested in getting my facts straight and properly locating the (all too sharable) blame for bringing the Church to its current position.

Grace and peace. I will look forward to your response, as I am looking forward to learning from you!

I’m also involved with the Aldersgate Renewal Movement. My experience with them is that they are almost entirely non-political. They are primarily interested in charismatic experience in the life of the church, and this is what they focus on.

Sorry I didn’t reply sooner but I’m struggling with a knee injury and not able to sit at my computer for long periods of time. Also sorry, Kevin, but I don’t remember our previous interaction in December.

I don’t find anywhere in the article you referenced that anyone from the Charismatic Movement (if that means Aldersgate Renewal Ministries/ARM) was involved in legislative strategizing at GC 2004. I thought at first that you may have meant the Confessing Movement, as folk from that group are mentioned in the story.

I have worked with ARM on several of its events and I currently serve on its Advisory Board, though I have been relatively inactive for the last several years. Any questions that you have about ARM’s relationships with the other renewal groups or its thoughts/actions regarding schism should probably be directed to their Executive Director, Jonathan Dow.

The problem with your making such inflammatory and unfounded statements about ARM (or the UMC Charismatic Movement in general) is that it tends to undermine your overall credibility.

GC 2004 was the first one I attended as Director of Transforming Congregations (TC). At that time we were an independent ministry, and I was mainly there to host some people that shared their testimonies of freedom from unwanted same-sex attraction. I was not privy to any of the “behind the scenes” strategizing about amicable separation, so I don’t have answers to your questions about how that exactly played out. I have heard from many people that someone from the pro-LGBT side betrayed the rest of the group by leaking information to the media, but I don’t know who that person might have been. The rest of the article seems pretty accurate from what I recall.

Since that time, I have become increasingly involved with legislative activism at GCs 2008 and 2012. (Yes, that contradicts ARM’s approach, but they still allow me to stay connected to them.) And TC merged to become a department of Good News last year.

I administer the TC Facebook page and I’m the one who posted the link and commentary about your article regarding the Bible and homosexuality. I put “via media” in italics (nothing inherently pejorative about that, I think) when describing you because I don’t discern from your writings that you’re particularly centrist. Your proposed process for unity might be moderate, but your worldview regarding human sexuality certainly doesn’t seem to be. And overall, my problem was more with your biblical reasoning, which I think was pretty superficial, than your denominational self-identification.

I acknowledge that we haven’t gotten off to a good first (or possibly second) start, and I recognize my responsibility in that. I appreciate the opportunity here to answer your questions and clarify my position.

And BTW … from your picture, I think we probably share a love and concern for the Palestinian people in the Holy Land. (That’s one place where I part company with some of the folk in the renewal and reform movement.)

I would love to know how you came across my “worldview concerning human sexuality,” as I have never published anything on the subject. Perhaps you did not make it to the end of the piece that you posted where I explicitly write that “this little exercise is not actually to resolve the Christian debate about the morality of same-sex relations.”

It is a shame that you find the posited argument in the blog to be “superficial.” I would love to hear exactly why you take the reading (proposed there for pedagogical purposes) to be superficial. Reasons are so rare in this dialogue, where labels are so common. Dialogue happens by engaging with interlocutors, not by posting a blog to a group of like minded people. I suspect you could tell by the responding comments that none of the participants on your facebook page had any doubt about how to locate a “via media” Methodist. Shame you did not step in to attempt to clarify that you did not have any pejorative intent.

In the end I would suggest that the best thing you could do to clarify that the ARM is not involved in schismatic politics is to distance yourself as far as possible for the organization.

I do hope that at some time in the future we will have an opportunity to dialogue more profitably, possibly on the issues surrounding Israel/Palestine. That is indeed one of my passions. In fact, I think that dealing with the treatment of people in the region is a much more central concern to the Gospel than our current discussion of the morality of homosexuality. That concerns the sense in which I am a via media Methodist, and proud to be such.

Kevin, I tried to respond last night as clearly and reasonably as I could, but you seem to have responded on more of a personal note and with a great deal of animosity toward me. But once again I will attempt to answer the additional questions and concerns raised in your response.

You’re absolutely right that you have made no explicit statements about where you personally stand in regard to the morality or immorality of homosexual behavior. I am inferring from your blog post that I referenced and your “Draft of a Statement from the Middle” that you believe covenanted same-sex relationships are morally OK. (If I’m in error about that, please correct me.) I don’t consider that position to be “centrist.”

I admit I could have been more specific about what I considered to be the superficial biblical scholarship in your blog post — that would be your inadequate treatment (including amount of space) of “traditionalist” compared to “revisionist” arguments. Some mention of Theology of the Body or natural law, for example, would have been appropriate. Traditionalists base their beliefs about sex and marriage on far more than the handful of texts to which you alluded. Again, this leads me to believe that you are personally more aligned with (or at least more appreciative of) revisionist thinking. I apologize if that was an incorrect assumption.

Of course TC’s Facebook page mainly interacts with “like minded” people. I don’t pretend to a bridge-builder (not insinuating here that you do), and I’m not particularly interested in “dialogue” with moral revisionists, or even centrists if they’re actually moral revisionists in disguise (again, not insinuating that applies to you.) I will give some thought to your suggestion about responding better to the especially snide responses on the page, but I don’t believe it’s my job to police them.

I don’t need to clarify ARM’s position about anything or to distance myself from them in any way. You’re the one making the false accusations about “the Charismatic Movement,” whatever that really means. And apparently you’re also unwilling to either retract your remarks or to apologize. That’s entirely your problem, and not mine.

Finally, as a moral traditionalist regarding sex and marriage I realize there are other issues critical to the mission of the Church, the plight of Palestinian Christians being one of them. If I’d had my own way, I would not have dedicated the last decade almost 24/7 to the issues around human sexuality. But God supernaturally called me to that role. Nonetheless, I do believe that our current denominational struggle is not unimportant or a matter of opinion. The way I read 1 Thessalonians 4:1-7, getting our sexual lives aligned with the revealed will of God is a crucial component of the sanctification process. That’s enough reason for me to continue doing what I do.

Kevin, I’m more than willing to continue this conversation if you think it’s helpful to either you or your readers. Otherwise, I’m just as willing to let it drop.

As I noted in response to your first comment, I apologized to you six months ago if I had confused any church organizations in my piece. Perhaps I should have been more explicit in saying that I continued to extend that apology to you at present. Given your and David’s protests, I will be happy to change the language in the above statement.

To be clear, I have no animosity toward you. It is what you do that I find deeply frustrating. It is the way in which you and others like you have poisoned the waters of the church against charitable and respectful dialogue. I also do not mince words in my unqualified condemnation of the contemporary movement toward schism (though this, of course, is not pointed at you, as I would not assume your position on that issue, since you have not stated it).

In case this all appears to be mere labeling, I am happy to offer examples from our current exchange. As you admit, you rejected my claim to be a via media Methodist because of what you had assumed about my “worldview concerning homosexuality.” You then suggested that the Biblical reasoning in my earlier blog was “superficial.” As it turns out, you held that it was superficial because I did not adequately lay out a “traditionalist” view which would have required going further into a thicker account of theology or natural law. Both problems that you have with the post appear to stem that you never got to the end of it. Because it is there where I explicitly reject the claim that I am providing an argument for any “worldview concerning homosexuality” and specifically note that my point is that our reading of scripture will depend upon the thicker accounts of theology and natural law that we bring with us to the text.

Again, from my Statement from the Middle, you “infer that I believe covenanted same-sex relationships are morally OK.” This is fascinating given that the statement is explicit about saying nothing about the how one ought to judge the morality of such relationships. The whole point of the Statement is to articulate a view of the Church in which there is freedom for churches and their members to consult their own consciences on this issue. As such, it would not only have been strange, but also self-defeating to include a judgment about such relationships in the Statement.

As it turns out, there is a big difference between providing a space of freedom to do x and being neutral, or approving of x. (Again, the point is explicitly made in the Statement). God provides us freedom to do many things of which God does not approve. Further, the United Methodist Church already does the same. The United Methodist Church takes no position on the morality of masturbation. The United Methodist Church takes a self-reflexively tense position on issues of War and Peace. Does that mean that the United Methodist Church doesn’t think these issues are important? Does it mean that the United Methodist Church is rejecting people who have, or judgments that hold that there are problems with the morality of war or masturbation? By no means. It turns out that we have found means to disagree on many issues which we continue to hold morally significant.

This should also answer your insinuation at the end of your recent comment that I take “getting our sexual lives alighted with the revealed will of God” to be “unimportant or a matter of opinion.” If you were to go back to the claim I actually made in my comment, it was that the dealing with things like the conflict in Israel/Palestine is “a much more central concern to the Gospel than our current discussion of the morality of homosexuality.” In saying this, I was reiterating the claim, found in the Statement, that the issue of homosexuality should be located outside the category of necessary or essential in Church doctrine. I never said it was unimportant or that it was a matter of opinion.” So what you have done in your response to me you have both confused the object of my comment (confusing contemporary debates about homosexuality with all discussion of the relation of our sexuality to God’s will), and have confused what I was claiming about the object of my comment. By the time you are done, there really isn’t anything left of my original sentence to which you are actually responding. Again, if you had carefully read and engaged with the Statement from the Middle, all of this is explicitly laid out there in much more detail.

I could go on, but I think that is enough to make my point. How is one to dialogue (and certainly to dialogue about the viability of a via media Christianity) with a person that does not read to the conclusion of a blog, fits everything she reads into a binary of conservative and progressive regardless of content, takes claims out of context, and puts words into the mouth of her interlocutor? I will be honest, I don’t know the answer to that question.

So, you are probably right that we should leave the discussion there. I wish you the best Karen in your further ministry, and I pray that sometime we might be able to have a more profitable exchange.

But, in closing, you don’t need to apologize to me. You need to correct/retract your statements and apologize to ARM. That was my original concern since the beginning of this thread. From there, I was only trying to answer your questions in as forthright and honest way as I could.

Still, I do appreciate the interaction as it helps me fine tune my thoughts and gives me a much better understanding of you.

I do appreciate how your “Last word is yours, Kevin.” Is immediately followed by two more paragraphs of your own words. Sly, Karen. Sly. I mean, lacking in subtlety, yes. But still, quite a rhetorical move!

Kevin, the article you posted doesn’t mention ARM. I don’t hear anyone from ARM calling for schism as a representative of that group. There is surely some overlap between the membership of ARM and Good News, but I’ve never experienced ARM itself as divisive. By the way, these 80 pastors and theologians aren’t officially representing Good News, either, just for the record.

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